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Reading: Emily Corwin

Since Emily Corwin and I are Brain Mill Press family, I have been so pleased to see the successes that continue to come her way. Her work has or will appear . . . everywhere. Also, last year, she and JD Thornton (and Soup) started Bad Pony magazine, which you should most definitely read and admire.

Corwin’s poetry is consistent in terms of style and themes. Her language — the words she chooses and the way she lets them play on the page — makes the poems immediately recognizable as hers. Many of the poems read like modern day retellings of fairy tales, stories of girls who have wishes that may or may not come true.

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Darkling (Platypus Press, 2016)

Feelings while reading: Imagine digging in your grandmother’s garden, finding a buried box, opening it up, and discovering some short messages. You know they were written to be found. That’s what reading these felt like.

Favorite poems: hex, trellis

Favorite lines: “maybe / some shortbread, maybe a screech and madness, like doll / blood, doll in a pale sheet, cords tied at the back.” (covet)

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My Tall Handsome (Brain Mill Press, 2016)

Feelings while reading: Like I was reading spells that have been cast against (and by) the poems’ speaker. Like a witness.

Feelings while reading: Drenched in girl-ness: this is a book full of a girl. The voice is young and strong. I love the way the speaker’s actions are described: “I catch coldness here,” “I move like infection,” “I misread the hours,” “I fill a particular dark.” The title of this collection is perfection in terms of the poems inside, tender and fragile.